Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

            Didst perceive it?--

-Leontes

The Winter’s Tale                          Act I, Scene ii, Line 215

And here’s where Leontes’s sanity train leaves the tracks, very early on in the play. What he’s asking Camillo, one of the lords of Sicilia, is whether or not he’s perceived what Leontes has perceived. What has Leontes perceived? He has perceived, much incorrectly, that his wife and Polixenes, the king of Bohemia, are getting way too friendly, and that there’s something more than friendship going on between the two. There is not. But that’s what Leontes is perceiving and he’s determined that others must perceive it as well. Others do not. But that won’t stop Leontes from acting disastrously on his jealousy, and the remainder of the action in the play rests on Leontes jealous reactions to what he believes he perceives.

I guess we could get into a really long philosophical discussion about perceptions. But we won’t. Even though I consider myself a bit of a philosopher (and my son-in-law who is himself a professor of philosophy has informed me that I am allowed to call myself a philosopher), I don’t feel qualified to lead such a discussion. So suffice it to say that perceptions can be tricky. Very, very tricky.

This is a piece of modern art of which I am quite fond. I believe there is much to see in it. One of the things I see is a hint of the interstellar. Didst perceive it?